Re-Membering the Body of Christ

Sermon 1-27-19 P = emPowered

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

If you haven’t noticed yet, we’re in the middle of doing an in-depth look at baptism, assigning each letter an aspect of our baptismal life.  Each week, a new word is revealed, and by the time we get to Lent, we’ll have gone through the entire word BAPTISM!

Let’s do a quick review, shall we? So far we’ve covered B, which is…. That’s right, born from above…. Last week was A, which stands for …. Affirmed, that’s correct. Last week, we also walked through the Affirmation of Baptism service, which is more commonly known as… Confirmation.

This week we’ve gotten to P, which stands for… emPOWERED! Haha, maybe I cheated just a little bit. In our baptisms, we are called and anointed by the power of the Holy Spirit, empowered to live as part of God’s new community, which we call the Body of Christ. In fact, one of the promises that your parents made FOR you in your baptism, and a promise you later AFFIRMED in your confirmation… is to “live among God’s faithful people.” That’s the very first promise listed, because that is where baptismal life begins – as part of God’s community among the people of faith.

The Christian life of faith, begun in baptism, is not meant to be lived “lone ranger” style. We’re created as social beings who thrive on relationships. We long to belong somewhere, whether that is a physical place, or a group of people who deeply love us for who we are. We don’t do well when we try to be completely independent and “make it on our own.” We all need a posse of people behind us to support us and living out our baptismal promises and trying to follow Jesus is no exception.

Even Jesus didn’t “go it alone.” He invited along twelve unlikely characters to join him in his ministry, and we’ll find out more about how they end up as part of Jesus’ movement in just a few weeks. For now, though, we jump into the story just after Jesus’s baptism and testing in the wilderness. Then, filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit…. Jesus begins his world tour as messiah, and his first stop is…. At home. Back to his roots, back to his back to his home community, back to his home town even… even back to his home synagogue. 

There, in front of the little old ladies who used to pinch his cheeks when Jesus was a kid, he preached one of the shortest sermons ever. “Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Boom. Mic drop. The end. I bet that is not the sermon those church ladies where expecting.

This first sermon sets the tone for his entire ministry. “Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In Jesus, today the spirit is upon him, today the oppressed and the blind and the poor shall be liberated. It’s kind of a theme that Jesus picks up: Later in to Zacchaeus, that vertically challenged tax collector who pledges to repay everyone he has ever cheated, Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house.” While Jesus is on the cross, he turns to one of the criminals crucified with him and says, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

God has come to us TODAY. God loves us TODAY. God has chosen and has empowered you TODAY.

Today IS a very special day…after church we will be doing what we do best – eating and having fellowship with one another, and also having our annual meeting. But our annual meeting isn’t just about approving budgets, reading reports, and reviewing the last year – though all that IS important work for the church. The annual meeting also sets the tone for the coming year… and reminds us of who we are and what we have been empowered by our baptisms to be and to do as a family of God. We are reminded of things like our mission, values, purpose, and vision.

Does anyone remember our mission statement? If you picked up your annual report, you can find it right here…. And it goes like this: “Share the embrace of God’s love by being a family that welcomes, supports, and nourishes all seeking to make connections and to make a difference through service as part of the Body of Christ.”

We, as members of the Family of God, are part of the Body of Christ. Now what exactly do we mean by this? We didn’t pull the idea of “the body of Christ” out of thin air – it comes from right here in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.

I remember first hearing this passage at confirmation camp, and picturing a giant eyeball, just floating around – sort of like Mike from Monsters Inc or something out of a B rated horror/ sci fi movie. “When sermons go terribly wrong! Imagine a world, sometime in the future, a pastor turned mad scientist invented a way to represent her church in different types of body parts…. But she couldn’t know that every person in her church would become absorbed into one…. Giant…. EYEBALL!!” (It’s right there in 1 Corinthians, by the way!) 

RUN AWAY!!!

Now, Paul didn’t know about modern medicine and biology and stuff, otherwise he might have gotten EVEN WEIRDER: “The pancreas can’t say to the optic nerve – I have no need of you! So, scram!” “and the brain stem can’t say to the white blood cells– I have no need of you!” BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

It may sound fantastical or even funny… but Paul based this on something that was actually happening in real life. The Christian community at Corinth was NOT doing very well at being a community. They were deeply divided, constantly fighting, and forgetting what Christian community is about: Love.

One of the ways that Christianity revolutionized the world is by teaching how Jesus lived in TRUE and authentic community with everyone, regardless of rank, religion, or race. In our own Jesus-following communities, Paul reminds us that here is no place for hierarchy, power plays, manipulation, or oppression. All members of the body are necessary and valued. Sadly, even thousands of years later, Christian communities even now still fall into the same problems that the churches in Corinth did.  And so, preachers like Paul have continued to come forward to remind us and challenge us, preachers like Martin Luther King Jr.

Just this past Monday was MLK Day, and many churches have taken the opportunity of this “day off” to sponsor a “Day of Service.” Here at Family of God, we hosted our first ever day of service, where 25 kids – many of them with no direct connection to this church – showed up despite the cold, to do various service projects. We do to honor his memory and continue his work toward justice and the kingdom of God. Dr. King had a dream that he shared with the world – a dream that all people, no matter their background or skin color, could live together in something he called the Beloved Community.

Beloved community is pretty much exactly as it sounds – a community where all people are loved and valued by God and by one another. A community where compassion and empathy are second nature. A community where everyone has a seat at the table.

If someone is missing from the table, the community – the body – is not complete. Just as one person cannot function as the WHOLE body, when someone’s voice is not welcome at our table, the rest of the body of Christ suffers. 

We are empowered in our baptisms to become the Beloved community. It starts here and now, wherever we are at, with whoever we are with. With the people we love, and with the people we find difficult or challenging to love, with people we don’t understand sometimes.

This power that comes from God is best manifested by being vulnerable and accepting that we are not complete without each other. This seems rather backward – why are we being given power, so that we can give that power away? Except that this is EXACTLY what Jesus modeled for us. He had everything and chose to spend most of his time with the kind of people that everyone else overlooked and threw away.

I mentioned that when I first heard this passage from 1^st Corinthians explained, I was at confirmation camp, daydreaming about giant eyeballs flying around. As we listened to these words of Paul, me, the youth group leader, and everyone in my confirmation class, were in canoes, lashed together with rope, drifting in the middle of the lake. Where one of us went, the rest of us went too. We would only get to shore by doing it together, and no one was going to be abandoned or forgotten.

That’s us. That’s the body of Christ. Re-Membering one another. Sharing “the embrace of God’s love by being a family that welcomes, supports, and nourishes all seeking to make connections and to make a difference through service as part of the Body of Christ.” Thanks be to God. Amen.